Submitted 2 days ago by ConstantPain@lemmy.world to showerthoughts@lemmy.world
The way zombies are portrayed in many movies, they shouldn’t really stand a chance. Maybe evil magic zomies (as described in CONOP 8888) could be a problem.
All the other zombies would still have to follow the rules of physics, chemistry and biology, so they would just stop functioning after a while. Rigor mortis, sepsis and microbial decay should take care of the problem in a day or two.
Hmm. If we look at fungi zombies, people don’t really need to die, they just need to be infected. No death = no rigor mortis, also the fungi have antibacterial properties, so no sepsis or any infections. The only issue is that they still need to get energy/food somehow to keep going.
Are those zombies smart enough to stay hydrated? If not, it’s game over in a few days.
That aside, I think the book I am Legend handled the initial outbreak in one of the best ways to actually make it stick. There was a worldwide dust storm which infected everyone. A large fraction of the population succumbed to the infection and died or became “zombies” (more vampires really, they retained a lot of intelligence. The Will Smith movie really fucked the plot.). It’s one of the few ways to get past the problem of the various world militaries just curb stomping the initial zombie outbreak. Sure, there would be some confusion and some losses while people figured out the various rules for the zombies, but WWI is kinda instructive here. Massed charges into machine gun fire didn’t go well for the soldiers in the charge. As another historic example, the Banzai Charge employed by Imperial Japanese soldiers during WWII was not only suicidal by nature, it was worthless against a well armed, organized line. Yes, zombies might be more resilient and less prone to morale breaking, but they’d still be mowed down en masse. And that’s before we consider air strikes, artillery and napalm. A combined arms assault against a mass of zombies wouldn’t be pretty. Especially considering that zombies wouldn’t have the strategic thinking to attack supply lines and depots.
Zombie outbreaks are fun in media. I’m currently playing 7 Days to Die, again. And I’m having lots of fun. I also don’t spend too much time thinking about what the backstory might be. There’s zombies, and it’s my job to survive. That’s all the setup I need to enjoy the catharsis of zombie heads exploding in gore.
Oh you’re absolutely right. These are just monsters that serve a purpose for the plot. Nothing more. You shouldn’t overthink it.
Although… Overthinking it is kinda fun too, but the people who wrote the script were kinda hoping you wouldn’t do that. The whole plot suddenly falls apart if you think about it more than 5 seconds. Well, at least that’s on brand.
This is why there always has to be a virus or something, zombies are just humans minus the most important human survival trait and you’d never have an apocalypse without some kind of handwave for nearly everyone getting turned at once.
I used to think zombies were a ridiculous concept. Like just walk away briskly and youll be fine.
Then when coronavirus happened and we were being told to stay inside and keep away from eachother because everybody’s dying we saw people going out of their way to lick things in supermarkets.
Granted it wasnt as catastrophically bad as we were led to believe, but we saw how people reacted when we thought it was.
Over 7 million deaths confirmed to be directly caused by covid. And that’s with states and entire countries lying about the number of covid deaths. It’s actually between 19 and 36 million if we analyze the actual total number of excess deaths.
And that was with most countries attempting to minimize people’s exposure.
I don’t really want to know what you would call a catastrophe if somewhere between 7,000,000 and 36,000,000 dead humans doesn’t qualify.
Im not saying it wasnt bad, just in the very early days they were telling us it was going to be armageddon bad. The dead outnumbering the survivors and shit like that.
Maybe it wasn’t “that catastrophic” because measures were taken to mitigate the risk.
Almost definitely. Im not in here trying to say its a mad hoax from China to install the NWO and cripple our economy while injecting us with the 5G or whatever the hell the conspiracy nuts were saying. I was saying we saw people deliberately going out of their way to do some stupid shit while we were at the height of the fear.
If zombies happen we’ll see the “hug a Z challenge” or people taking it in turns to stick a rotted finger down their throat or something.
Yeah but so would a lot of predators anyway. A tiger probably wouldn’t do much damage if it could just slap or gum you
According to this source, adult male bengal tigers weigh 380-580 lbs. Pretty sure it could just run into you at full speed and do plenty of damage.
I stand corrected. Idk why I thought they were lighter than that.
I think if a tiger slaps you, it could probably at least give you a concussion
If I removed the teeth and claws of a tiger, I’d still bet on it to win v an unarmed human 100 times out of 100.
So basically people pushing you around and disrespecting your personal space.
I was trained for that while commuting to work.
What's a media zombie? Someone who watches 7 hours of tiktok every day?
Tiktok is the generation that can infer meaning by context?
Well yes, if you remove the two things humans have that will cause the most damage they would be pretty ineffective unless a large group can crush you in an alley or something.
One character from the Walking Dead had a couple of zombies with no teeth or hands, they really couldn’t do anything.
I mean, they could still grab you, suckerpunch you, fall on you and weigh you down, fall in front of you and trip you, knock stuff over that’ll hurt you, catch fire and spread it elsewhere, hit you with the stuff sticking out of them, in some cases carry stuff to hit you with, spread god knows what germs to other people/places…
Depends on the zombie. But most zombies as portrayed in popular media are not capable of punching you, hitting you, or even using objects in any meaningful way. A zombie trapped in a locked car will stay there indefinitely, unless they just happen to hit the unlock button through their random flailing.
Zombies themselves are never capable. It’s their durability, relentlessness, and numbers that make them a terrifying threat.
Fantastic shower thought
SatansMaggotyCumFart@piefed.world 2 days ago
In World War Z the North Koreans removed all its population’s teeth because of this.
Saapas@piefed.zip 2 days ago
That book had some good stuff but also some hilarious shit like how the military failed or the blind anime samurai part.